Innovative Agri-food and Biomedical technology solutions
Enabling Access to Health from Nature with 3 Technologies
Driving functional food sustainability and SDG goals of “Zero Hunger”, “Good Health and Well Being for all” as contributions from the Agri-food Industry while also enlarging the role of plant protein extracts in the Biomedical industry.
KosmodeHealth is a deep-tech start-up born out of the National University of Singapore’s Food Science and Technology Department.
Driven by one mission to expand access to health from nature, KosmodeHealth is a business enabler in two industries - Agri-food and Biomedical, with three technologies.
Within the Agri-food industry, KosmodeHealth repurposes food processing wastes into functional ingredients for human nutrition, saving the planet from damages caused by dumping of these wastes into landfills. Harnessing such wastes for human nutrition provides an economical source material to address the issue of malnutrition and provide a means of feeding the population without the need to grow more crops.
Within the Biomedical industry, food processing wastes are repurposed into functional materials for 3D cell culture applications.
Leveraging Nature to live up to its Promise
Global Challenges in Agri-food
© UNICEF/UN0406721/Andrianantenaina
Mankind is facing an existential challenge - the population is growing and aging, chronic health diseases are increasing, the issue of malnutrition will only escalate. The cry to feed 10 billion by 2050 is getting louder. There is an urgent need to produce enough food that is abundant, cheap and nutritious without wrecking the earth.
Food manufacturers must address the challenge of achieving food sustainability and meet the nutritional needs of the aging, and diabetic Asian population in particular of which 60% reside in Asia and for whom the staple diet of starch-based rice and noodle is a contributory factor.
By-products generated during food manufacturing contain valuable proteins, fibre and other compounds that could be utilized for human nutrition, rather than being wasted in landfills or used for animal feed.
This requires innovative approaches to develop and produce foods that provide essential nutrients, whilst being environmentally sustainable and economically viable.
Our Solution
Repurposing the 1.3billion tons of edible Agri-food wastes generated globally every year. Of these, over 200 million tons are nutrient-enriched food processing wastes or by-products generated after primary food productions. Examples include Spent Barley Grains from beer and malt beverage productions, oil meals after oil productions, wheat bran from flour mills. Most are currently dumped into landfills or at best used as animal feed or plant fertilizers.
KosmodeHealth applies our plant extraction and functional ingredient and material formulation expertise to extract nutrients like protein and fibre from these wastes, producing functional ingredients for human nutrition, and functional materials for human health. A case example is the production of W0W® Noodle.
More about W0W® Noodle
W0W® Noodle, the world’s only functional food with zero glycemic response, is an example of functional food developed to enable blood sugar control without compromising the pleasure of food for diabetes patients. W0W® Noodle is a starchless protein fibre noodle, made from valorised Spent Barley Grains (SBG) and is clinically validated to have 0 glycemic response. Our approach for the valorisation of SBG into W0W® Noodle is included in the APEC Food Security work plan as a reference project.
Biomedical - Challenges in 3D Cell Culture
3D cell culture, which involves the growth of cells outside its natural environment, is a fast growth market for biomedical development. Bioscaffold and 3D bioprinting, are both dominant and growing platforms to facilitate the growth of cells. Animal protein, being a natural protein conducive for cell growth, is currently the preferred biomaterial for scaffold and bio-ink for 3D bioprinting. It is however extremely expensive, lacks reproducibility and printability.
Though standard off-the shelf scaffolds are available, most of these scaffolds consist of synthetic material which are less conducive for cell growth. As different cells need different micro-environment to be recreated for optimal growth, the range of available scaffolds are too limited to meet the varied growth needs of millions of cells.
Our Solutions
Our solutions to address the challenges in 3D cell culture are anchored on our triple technology platform:
